invariably been taken are not passages wherein the
poet's attention seems to have lagged, or his spirits
drooped. They are rather, in fact, his most careful
and ambitious performances; Dryden never dozed.
Nor can they be explained as indiscretions of youth.
They are found everywhere throughout his works,
from first to last. It is plain that Dryden was fol-
lowing false lights when he committed his offenses
against taste. Either he was pursuing ends which
by nature he was unqualified to reach, he was at-
tempting the impossible, he was speaking a lan-
guage which was not instinctive; or he was reach-
ing ends which were hardly worth reaching, he was
sedulously perfecting a language which though
native was not gauged for sterling utterance. Good
literature is the effect of adequate form applied to
genuine material. The poetry in Dryden which is
not good can be explained by errors which he made
first in choosing his material and second in culti-
vating his form. On the one hand, false lights led
him to employ two kinds of materials which in his
case were spurious: first, the materials of the fancy,
in works like Annus Mirabilis; second, the mate-
rials of the human passions, in works like the heroic
plays and the tragedies. The results were absur-
dity and bathos. On the other hand, false lights
led him to give excessive attention to the form of
his verse at times when the matter was of little im-
port, as in the Virgil. The results were artificiality
and monotony. The purpose of the present chapter
is to follow Dryden as he pursues his wandering
fires, and to sweep away the rubbish which he leaves

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